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Oct 21, 2018

How an everyday guy makes $500,000 a year playing Fortnite

Hint: through blood, sweat, and tears
In context: Esports is a booming industry and there’s lots of money to
be made. Nick Overton seems just a run of the mill 27-year-old guy from
Iowa, but under the humble smile is a dangerous Fortnite player known as
‘Immarksman’ who works for the professional esports team Counter Logic
Gaming. With them, he is already making between $300,000 and $500,000 a
year, and he doesn’t even consider himself elite.

An average day for Nick: wake up around 9 am, discuss business with the
team and get to work on a YouTube video. Finish the YouTube video by 3
pm, and then get ready to stream from 5 pm to 10 pm. Playing video games
for hours every day might sound like slacking off for some, but when
you take it seriously and analyse every match, the working week becomes
brutal. "I don’t go out with friends ever," Nick says. "I'm streaming
every day."

If there’s an update to Fortnite, the day is even longer: he gets up at 3
am and immediately begins work on making a new video about the update.
“It helps get my channel name out there more,” he says it’s a necessity
to focus on staying current.

Nick received his first gaming console, a Nintendo 64 when he was just
six. “It might have been, at the time, his biggest regret,” Nick said
when referring to his father after he’d given Nick the system. One day,
when he got home from school, he discovered that his father has sold his
Xbox to end Nick's gaming addiction. “I freaked out. I was so mad at
him.” He didn’t play video games for two years.

Once he was 14, he simply got a job and brought an Xbox himself. His father was very unimpressed.

“The best advice he gave me is, if you’re going to do this, you need to find a way to make money from it.”

Having moved out from his mother's basement he can reveal that he “never
thought” he was going to make any money. “I literally only did it
because I liked to do it."

He recently discussed how he sustains his income with Des Moines
Register and Yahoo Finance: “Most people are used to working a job,
getting a paycheck,” Nick said. “Simple. With live streaming and
YouTube, it’s much more complex.” Most YouTube gamers will be partnered
with a Multi-Channel Network (MCN) that act as their agents and tell
them what to do to make their money.

According to Nick, and MCN will say, “‘We have, you know, 10,000
creators that get this many views per month.’ And YouTube says, ‘All
right, we’ll find ads for them.’ They take a percentage of that
advertisement… They give a percentage to the network, and the network
pays you a percentage based on your contract.”

Twitch works pretty differently: “On Twitch, a lot of the revenue that
you make is usually through the people watching you. People will tip you
$2, or $3, or they subscribe, similar to like an old-fashioned magazine
subscription…

“Twitch charges them for the subscription, $5 a month on average. The
creator of the streamer gets a percentage of that. Twitch gets a
percentage of that. And, in return, they get access to some extra
benefits in the stream, and they also get some extra benefits sometimes
from the streamer themselves. They might have like a day where they play
with fans.”

While getting paid a fortune to play video games all day is crazy
enough, Nick says one of the weirdest parts is when people recognize him
in public. “I’ve had fans stop me and take pictures at Target, or … I
might see somebody and do an autograph or a picture.” He’s even had fans
show up to his front door before. “It’s a little bit awkward because
most people don’t expect a video game player at a local restaurant.
Like, ‘Is that guy famous?’ No, I just play video games.”

These days, playing video games can make you just as much a celebrity as
playing soccer for your country or performing for the president.